Cape Cod Chronology Viewer

This Chronology Viewer was created by the Cape Cod Commission, enabling users to view historic trends and aerial imagery from 1938 to 2014. Using the buttons on either side of the screen, users can change the base imagery to one of several years of aerial photography. These USGS images were made available to the Commission by the Cape Cod Conservation District. Commission staff worked with the images to fit them into modern mapping software. The time slider at the bottom of the page shows when individual parcels went into development between 1650 and 2012, all based on local assessing data. The yellow “Statistics” button provides historical statistics by town, such as population change and tax rates over time. The “Animal Count'” tab is interesting, as it shows the transition from a more agricultural way of life to a more modern economy. Cows and sheep were initially counted by tax collectors, as they were taxed by the head. When viewing statistics, click on the “stats on/off” button to return to the map. 

Open the Chronology Viewer in a new window